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Understanding the Game
Due to the necessity of certain design choices, PACG cards can be quite text-heavy. As you discover more aspects of the basic game design, these cards become much easier to think about - for both gameplay and roleplay! This article includes as many of these in one place as we have discovered so far. Skills Skills are derived from a parent ability - for example, a character may have the Melee skill deriving from the Strength ability. There are expected parent abilities for each skill (and knowing these makes it clear when an exception is made for an interesting character concept, like NAME ETC.) If your character has one of these skills but it's powered by a different ability, that's interesting - and it's probably explained in their backstory! Check the back side of their token card to help you roleplay. For example: Celeste has the ability Survival: Intelligence +3. According to her token card, her knowledge and astrological expertise has kept her ship afloat on many occasions - she's an academic of action. There's a lot of queues there - think about how to tie them in when you succeed on checks to track or befriend animals. When skills are tested, they are frequently paired with their parent ability - such that a check could be made with either. Every character can attempt this roll, but any character with the specific derived skill will receive a bonus. For RP purposes, this means there are 3 basic types of check. Let's consider the barrier Collapsing Scaffolding to showcase each type of check. Throughout this article and until the community decides to replace these conventions, you'll see these terms, the 6 basic ability names shortened to their 3 letter abbreviations (e.g. Strength->STR), and untrained checks written in bolded shorthand: STR)Melee. In general, you may find bolded terminology useful for describing elements of the PACG system. Most characters have 3 trained skills. They typically have only one of two key skills which their combat or most commonly-used abilities key off of. For martial characters, this typically includes Melee or Ranged. For casters - Arcane or Divine. Boons Skill checks to acquire boons generally fall into one of two categories: * Test of worthiness: test the same skill used in one of the card's defining effects E.g. weapons, spells, tools. * Recruitment: single-time check to obtain useful effect. E.g. allies, many items. Weapons Key skills: STR)Melee and DEX)Ranged - for acquisition and combat Unlike most combat spells and items, Weapons simply need to be revealed to allow a Combat check. This means they can stay reliably at your character's side, allowing for more confident exploration. Weapon combat checks are based on either a Melee or Ranged Untrained skill + a die + Magic damage. Exotic/monk weapons may allow an Acrobatics check to me made instead. Weapons are acquired through the same skill check rolled in their use. The difficulty to acquire a weapon is nearly always the expected extra damage the weapon can contribute to a Combat check (in addition to the base skill, likely Melee or Ranged). Spells Key skills: INT)Arcane and WIS)Divine - for acquisition, combat, and recharge The difficulty to acquire a spell is nearly always 2 lower than its cost to recharge. Spells that allow Combat checks are generally set in the same way as weapons (see above). Armor Key Skills: CON)Fortitude - for acquisition Clothing/Light Armor/Heavy Armor Items ... Allies Key Skills: CHA)Diplomacy (v. humanoids), WIS)Survival (v. Animals) - for acquisition Blessings Key Skills: WIS)Divine - for acquisition Banes Monster done yet There are many monster types - perhaps a short description of some very common ones here, but should probably link to a big list (ideally an automatic Wiki list) for further info. Barrier Trap * Key skills: DEX)Disable/Acrobatics or WIS)Perception, but vary widely * Most threaten damage to all local characters Obstacle * Key skills: DEX)Acrobatics or WIS)Survival/Perception, but vary widely * Most threaten to interfere with local explorations Lock * Offers 2 checks: easier DEX)Disable lockpick or tougher lock breaking - either Combat or STR)Melee * Offers mild improvements to local explorations Cache * Help you add new cards to your deck - much more if it's also trapped or locked Curse * ... Characters ... Damage Physical Damage Types Bludgeoning/Piercing/Slashing and their general traits, enemy types with strengths/vulnerabilities vs. Elemental Damage Acid/Cold/Electricity/Fire/Force E.g. Poison typically uses fewer, larger dice, providing high Combat roll potential but low reliability. While their expected value of damage is frequently a bit higher than other elements, typically, a higher portion of enemies have resistance vs. Poison than other elements (see: Undead, Constructs). Other Traits for describing Type Healing/Mental Disagreeing with Card Text There are a few fundamental design cornerstones that are still often missed in card proofing. Most such issues are fixed in FAQ. "Keen" weapons must have the standard weapon proficiency penalty: "If you aren’t proficient with weapons, the difficulty of this check is increased by 4." All Magic weapons contribute a unit DIE+N damage, like 1d4+1. All weapons that contribute such damage are Magic. All spells are Magic. Any spell that allows a combat check or evading a monster has the Attack trait. All Magic armors allow you to recharge the armor when you reset your hand. You must be proficient in light armors, or heavy armors to recharge a heavy armor. (Magic shields require light armor proficiency.) All armors granting this recharge ability are Magic. Any confirmed exceptions to the above should be listed here if found: so far We should expect FAQ to alter the following cards: so far